Timepieces Trade Market

Lange & Söhne : History

Ferdinand Adolph Lange had a simple reason for settling in the village of Glashütte in 1845.
He wanted to help reduce unemployment.
After a number of applications he eventually secured a repayable grant from the state.
With it, 15 young people could be trained as watch-makers.
The early years were beset with difficulty, and it often looked as if the enterprise would go under.
But hard work and total personal commitment paid off, for in 1875, the sons and grandsons of Adolph Lange inherited a flourishing business in which around 100 people earned their living producing precision pocket-watches.
During World War II, the Luftwaffe ordered pilots' wristwatches from Lange & Söhne.
Fitted with pocket-watch calibers, they measured 55 mm across the case.
In addition, the factory produced civilian wristwatches until 1945, in which Glashütte movements were only sometimes used.
Many of them had Swiss calibers.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Walter Lange, the founder's great-grandson saw the chance that his long-held dream of reviving the family business might come true.
Together with Germany's VDO/ Mannesmann-Group, which in 1991 took a stake in Lange Uhren GmbH, he set up ultra-modern production facilities in Glashütte to manufacture precision watch-movements bearing the "Made in Germany" label.
Among the first watches were the "Lange 1" with a three-day movement, offset hours, small seconds, power-reserve indicator and large date, as well as the "Pour le mérite" tourbillon with fusee and chain, which quickly sold out.
In 1997 Saxony's luxury watchmaker launched the "Sax-O-Matik" with the self-winding L921 movement featuring a gold three-quarter rotor and an innovative seconds-zeroing mechanism.
New in 1999 was the company's own column-wheel chronograph.
The caliber L 951.1 (diameter 30mm, height 7,5mm, balance frequency 18.000 v/h) has an instantaneous 30-minute counter that jumps precisely to the next minute as the chronograph hand passes the 60-second mark.
The fly-back function allows the chronograph to be zeroed and started again immediately without any intermediate step.
Because of its large date, this timepiece has been named the "Datograph".